Erina's Last Gift

Chawi lay face down on her bed, soaked in sweat, and possibly a little blood, trying to catch her breath.

She thinks she might have blacked out briefly, but isn't sure.

She shifts, and realizes her arms are still bound above her head, and the ache in her shoulders isn't just from the events of the past few hours.

She closes her eyes again, and clears her throat.

"Erina?"

A shadow moves across the flickering light from the candle behind her, and she hears Erina's soft shifting in as she moves against the chair in the corner that she usually rests in after one of their nights together.

"Hrmm?"

Her lazy voice, still dripping with sugar and spice, makes Chawi's nipple harden, and she grunts softly, realizing that the clamps are still firmly attached.

"Can...can I have some water, please? Cold?"

Chawi hears Erina's soft sigh, but the sound of her rising to get water is a sweet sound. Sometimes she would simply hand her some, and sometimes she wouldn't give her any until she begged for it through a throat already dry.

Chawi thankfully relaxes, and as a massive flood of ice cold water splashes on her back, causing her to jerk up and scream, she realizes her mistake.

Erina's voice comes from above her.

"Here's your water, darling..."

The ice in her voice makes Chawi whimper, but the cold does feel good on her back.

Footsteps retreat and return, and her wrists are untied, and then she hears the click as the bar between her ankles is released. A hand lightly brushes down the welps and cuts on her back, and Erina purrs.

"My prettiest work yet. I didn't think you'd last through the flechettes..."

Chawi freezes, wondering when Erina had pulled out the deadly sharp blades, and how she had missed the feeling of her skin being slowly sliced open. Perhaps it was after the dragon skin flogger, when almost anything would have felt sharp?

That explains her passing out, though, and as she settles back into her body and her nerves begin firing from all directions, she realizes that she is still swollen and wet, still aching and restless inside. Erina hadn't let her come, again, and the awareness sinks into her and curls around the ball of emotions in her.

She doesn't move, even when Erina gently sets a cup of ice cold water on the low table beside her bed, as she soaks the one small still dry spot on her bed with her tears.

Another small click on the table, and then more soft footsteps, and the sound of the room to her suite opening and closing.

She turns her head, and sees that Erina has left a small vial of healing potion on the table as well. She's never done that before, and the kindness grips her, and her slow tears turn into full out sobs that follow her into an exhausted and restless sleep.

"Holy fuck, Chawi, you look like SHIT."

Leena is known for not holding her tongue, and this was mild coming from her. Chawi looks up at her from the cup resting between her hands on the table in their shared kitchen, and sighs.

"I know you hate sabbaticals, but - you can't keep doing this to yourself."

As Leena shuffles around the table, using the furniture to steady herself to make her way to the stove she mutters "Or let that bitch keep doing this to you..."

Chawi shrugs, then grimaces as her back pulls from the not fully healed scars across her shoulders. Erina has left her a healing potion, but it was just enough to knit the skin back together, and Chawi knew Erina had a keen sense of how long it would take her to heal.

"I don't know what else to do, Leena. I've been to the Healers, and they tell me it wasn't my fault - I couldn't have known. I go to the Spirally Queen, and she tells me that the client is pleased by my thoroughness. I am not faithful enough to go to a priest, and get relief in absolution or prayer.... "

She trails off, and hears Leena's sigh as the usual pattern of their early morning conversations of the last three months repeats itself.

Chawi shrugs again, this time intentionally causing the marks on her back to flare into pain.

"I can't keep chasing my thoughts, and Erina gives me peace. It's the only time I don't feel like running out of my skin and flinging myself into the ocean.."

Leena's soft sigh comes from next to her, and Chawi looks up at her Sib as she rests a light hand on hers.

"Maybe the ocean is just what you need - you aren't confined to the Complex. Take another potion and go for a swim - it might clear your head enough to realize what you are doing isn't going to give you the peace you need..."

Chawi nods softly. She hadn't been to the ocean since she had returned from that last botched mission.

"In a few days...I don't...Erina wouldn't...."

She breaks off at Leena's exasperated huff.

"That bitch is going to break you, Chawi. You know she isn't what you need right now."

Chawi looks up at Leena, finding some small peace in the kindness in her eyes.

"But she's all I have."

As usual, Erina waited a few days, then came sauntering into the suite without warning.

Chawi was at her work table, fiddling with a mechanical toy one of the kidlings had managed to almost completely destroy, and she looked up with a smile.

"Erina!"

The joy that filled Chawi's voice was unmistakable, and Erina responded to it with a smile and a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"How are you feeling?"

Chawi shrugs lightly.

"About the usual. Staying busy helps.." she waved at the bits in front of her.

Erina nods, and sits on the edge of the table.

"I'm headed out on mission tomorrow, so...I guess this is the end."

Chawi's face falls, and she turns to look at her.

"So soon? I thought it would be at least another 10 day..."

Erina shrugs.

"Client left out a vital piece of information that changes the schedule. You know how that is..."

Chawi winces, and Erina's fingers reach down, and she picks up one of Chawi's blue locs and pulls on it lightly.

"I thought you'd want to spend a few hours with me before I leave?"

Chawi nods, leaning into the tug just a little. When they discovered they had tastes for the opposite sides of the same coin, they found themselves falling into bed together more and more frequently, and since Chawi had come home, Erina's rough hands on her skin were the only thing that eased the agony under it.

"How about a trip to the beach?" Erina asked.

"We haven't been to that one cove in a while...."

Chawi's mind flashes back to Leena's suggestion of a few days ago and nods, rising to change.

"I'll get some food while you change." Erina places a light kiss on her cheek, bites her earlobe sharply and walks out of the room.

The walk to the beach cove is refreshing, and this little corner of the beach is as serene and empty as it usually is.

Setting the items down and looking around, Chawi stretches up to the sun, feeling some of the tightness in her loosen.

Erina smiles up at her, her grass green eyes twinkling in amusement.

"Sit and drink with me, Chawi..."

She pats the blanket she's laid across the sand, and Chawi sinks to her knees, feeling the tightness in her chest loosen a little more at the opening to the now familiar ritual.

She made quick work of opening one of the bottles Erina had packed, pouring Erina a glass, and waiting for her to take an approving sip before pouring her own.

Erina leans back, and starts to speak, her rich voice sweet and modulated.

"Leena doesn't like me, does she?"

Chawi gulped, and shook her head.

"She doesn't understand how you treat me..."

Erina shakes her head and snorts.

"How I treat you? What about how you treat yourself? You are a woman - a gorgeous one, a skilled one, and yet you WANT to be controlled. You find pleasure in pain - it took me WEEKS to learn how to flog you without allowing you to come."

"From what I have learned in my time here, your hair charms indicate that you are skilled and respected - especially for one so young, and yet you share your Hearth with a cripple."

She drained her glass and held it out to Chawi to fill. With trembling hands she did so, somehow without sloshing or spilling a drop.

Her voice dropped a little, and she didn't need to add her usual dose of spice to make her words sting worse that any of her whips ever had.

"And you share your body so freely - whether for a cook-boy, a Prince, or a creature who is barely even..." Her nose wrinkled delicately "...from this plane..."

Chawi looked at Erina with tears in her eyes, shocked and in deep pain worse than anything she had received at the Elves hands.

Erina looked at her crumpled face and shook her head, her autumn gold locs flaring briefly around her head, then falling back into their normal glittering glory.

"I know you're only 19, but you shouldn't still be such a child. I have merely treated you as you deserve to be treated - a pretty, but mostly useless plaything to hone my art, and when I leave here, I'll never have to think of you again."

Chawi wonders briefly why the world has gone blurry and wavy, and realizes that her eyes have filled with silent tears that are pouring down her cheeks.

Erina sighs, and stands.

"I think I'll find some more dignified company for my last night in your lovely Complex - someone with a shred of pride."

Chawi can't see her walk off, as she sits, barely breathing, feeling as though Erina has taken a flechette and driven it into her heart.

She reaches blindly for the bottle and starts to refill her glass, and is startled by the slashes of liquid on the thighs. Looking down, she realizes her hands are shaking so badly that she cannot pour. Tossing the glass away, she starts to drink from the bottle as wracking sobs, the kind that she has never cried in memory start to pour from her.

She sobbed as she remembered how it started - the easy mission to sleep-gas a house so that she and her team could strip it of every valuable, which rapidly fell into a horror story as they discovered that the owners tiny twin daughters had come home a week early, and were cold and dead in their cribs from breathing in the gas.

She sobbed as she remembered the glee of the client, who paid the Naccis a bonus for dealing such a wounding blow to their enemy.

She sobbed at the Healers, who told her that it was not her fault, that she had no way of knowing the babies would be there.

She sobbed how she had wildly flung herself into drunkenness, which led to a minor prank turning into a major fire, and the Spirally Queen's decision to place her on sabbatical for 6 months until she calmed down.

She sobbed, thinking of how she first met Erina, tinier even than her, sparkling, charming, sweet, with a wicked wit and delicate tongue, and hands that knew how to play her until the images of those two tiny faces faded into a red wash of pain.

Chawi sat, and sobbed, and drank, until she was dry and empty and very drunk. A husk, staring out over the ocean and the slowly setting sun.

She rose, a little unsteady on her feet after having finished both of the bottles of wine, and almost all of the bottle of sake, and began stripping as she walked towards the ocean, dropping her clothing in her path.

As she stepped into the water, the warmth of it made her shudder, and her toes curled into the soft sand under the water. She walked in, higher and higher, pausing as the surface rushed between her thighs like the hand of a gentle lover. Shaking her head, she kept walking, completely submerging herself under the waves.

A few seconds later, she flung herself out of the water in a massive flip, and upon landing, began swimming. It had been months since she had been in the ocean, and as she rushed herself through the water, the warm caresses started to peel the agony of Erina's words from her.

She wasn't sure how far out she had swam before she wore herself out, and she flipped onto her back, floating in the warm water, staring at the sky, weighing the truth of Erina's words. Something about the emptiness of the water, the glowing of the moon, and the sparkling of stars in the almost black sky seemed to whisper to her.

"You are loved, sweet girl. You are perfect just as you are. You are fierce, and wild, and brilliant, and loyal, and passionate, and anyone would be a fool to undervalue that. Don't be afraid."

At those last words she gasped as an arm wrapped tightly around her waist, and she realized the voice wasn't from the sky, but from a familiar figure next to her.

"Tourte?" She said with a gasp, almost inhaling a lungful of water.

The water genasi smiled, and slid further out of the water, somehow resting his head comfortably on the surface of the waves.

"Long time no see, Blues...where the fuck have you been, and who was the bitch?"

She shook her head, ruefully.

"Making bad decisions, and the last in a series of bad decisions."

"Naccis?"

"No - she was just staying at the Complex while they put the finishing touches on a mission."

He nodded, then flipped onto his side, resting on the water as casually as she might rest on a couch.

"Good. I'd hate having to sully these waters by drowning her for hurting you..." he lips quirked with amusement "...in a way you don't enjoy."

She sighed and her lips quirked in a small returned smile.

"Do you really think she was wrong?"

Her voice came out small and weak, making her consider that just maybe, Erina was totally right.

"Chawi." He paused.

"Sichana."

"You've been swimming in these waters for over ten years. I've watched you grow into an amazing, bold, brave woman who flings herself into danger, waves, and love equally recklessly and with equal joy. Yes, that cunt was wrong."

One of the waves lifted itself, and cupped the back of her head, turning her so that she was looking into his face, and he smiled at her so warmly that it felt like the ocean itself warmed.

"Was she at least good?"

Chawi almost involuntarily shudders, and despite the warmth of the water and the air, her nipples hardened and crinkled.

His eyes caught the movement, and he smiled knowingly.

"Well, there is that, at least."

She laughed a little at her body's betrayal.

"She was....very talented, yes. A bit of a bitch, but talented in her craft."

"So, why are you still so restless?"

Chawi sighs, and mutters something, hoping the sound of the waves would cover her voice.

"You know that water doesn't block my hearing, but I know I didn't hear you right. You WHAT?"

Chawi grumbled, and repeated louder.

"She wouldn't let me come. I....I haven't had an orgasm in almost two months."

The water suddenly crashed around her, and she dipped briefly beneath the waves as his shock interrupted his steadying of the waves under her.

"She WHAT? You haven't in - WHAT? TWO MONTHS!!? Chawi, you haven't gone for more than two DAYS without an orgasm since you learned how to!"

She groans and rubbed her face, briefly lifting her locs out of the water and letting them splash back in behind her.

"Bad decisions, Tourte. Last in the series of bad decisions."

They floated in silence for a moment, then the water brushed against her cheek.

"May I help set you back on the right Path?"

She could hear the slight emphasis he placed on Path, and his further subtle warming of the water around her.

She closes her eyes, and smiles gently.

"Not fair, Tourte. You are meddling with the temperatures again."

She could feel the water shrug around her.

"You deserve some gentleness, Sichana. You are worthy of it."

Her eyes suddenly fill with tears.

"They were babies, Tourte. Tiny. Curled around each other and dead because I decided to be especially creative and use something new."

"You are still human, Sichana. You fuck up sometimes. You learn from your mistakes, and always make new ones."

Her eyes opened, and the moon wavered as she stared at it through her tears.

"Yes, Tourte. Please remind me that I'm worthy of being loved."

She felt the water shift in reaction to her words. The water beneath her firmed a little, holding her steady so that she could breath easily. Fingers, this time of flesh, touched and lightly stroked her, and she glanced over to see Tourte touching her, lightly stroking her hairline.

"You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful human I ever saw. Your hair was wild around your head, and it was the exact color of the water in my favorite pool. I watched you for weeks, unsure if this tiny human who seemed to have no fear of the sea would be afraid of me. "

His hands moved to tug lightly on a loc, and other fingers slid down the side of her face, stroking down her neck and along her shoulders.

"The first time you saw me, you laughed so loudly that it scared the seagulls, and you ran into the water and asked me if I wanted to be friends."

She felt the water shift as he moved beneath her, and despite being under the water, his voice came to her as clearly as if he was still whispering in her ears.

"We grew up together Sichana, and the first time you asked me for a kiss - as you said 'to see if I was salty...' it felt like the sun had broken through the clouds after a storm."

His hands ran down her shoulders, stroking her arms, soothing the tension out of them until he reached her hands and began gently massaging her palms. His watery fingers continued down her body, circling her breasts before washing over her nipples, stroking them into tiny pebbles as his voice continued.

Releasing her hands, he traced the invisible lines of her tattoo, and stroked over her belly, lightly resting his hands on her hips.

"When we kissed, and you giggled in my mouth, finding that I was salty, I knew you were someone unlike anyone I had met in my life."

His hands moved between her thighs, and began gently stroking her clit, still whispering to her through the waves. The darkness around them and the weightlessness of being suspended in the water allowed her to focus on nothing but the feel of Tourte against her - his hands, both of flesh and of water, one set on her clit, the other still on her nipples, wet and warm and smooth.

"When I first tasted you, and realized you tasted as sweet and salty as the sea, I might have fallen a little in love..." she could hear the smile in his voice, and felt him moving below her, his hands briefly leaving her hips, before his head nudged her thighs apart, and he rested his chin on her belly.

"Every time you have come to my waters - whether to bring me something you've found that reminded you of me on a mission, to swim with me, or to remind each other of how salty we both are, has been an honor and a privilege..."

His head slid away from her belly, and dipped between her legs, beginning to lightly suck and tease, his hands supporting her ass and holding her firm, while his lips and tongue teased and nibbled and sucked.

His voice was finally muffled, as watery fingers slid between curves of her ass and slid inside of her, warm and firm.

"You are precious and wonderful, Sichana. You are loved by more people than you know....and more would probably trade years of Support to be loved by you."

She could barely register his words, just heard the sincerity and care beneath them, as he delicately played with his tongue and lips against her pussy and his watery fingers gently pinched and twisted her nibbles while another pair fucked her ass.

She could feel a painfully tight spiral start to spin within her, as the combination of sensations started to send her to a place she hadn't visited in what felt like forever long.

"You are a treasure, sweet girl, and anyone who has the pleasure of touching you is receiving a wonderful, infinite gift..."

She began quivering, feeling shudders starting to run from her scalp to her toes.

His voice came clearer as he lifted himself out of the water, and positioned himself between her legs. She looked down her body, bemused once again at his size, as his manhood bobbed on top of the water, clearing her belly.